Decline of Science in England. 347 



Secretary and President to the Royal Society. Dr Wollastoii 

 in like manner filled the offices of Secretary, President, and 

 Vice-President ; Dr Young was its foreign Secretary, and Mr 

 Herschel was its Secretary. 



It was scarcely to be wondered at that the Royal Society 

 was alleged to have declined, when death or resignation had 

 deprived the institution of these its brightest ornaments. In 

 filling up these sad blanks, despair rather than sagacity seems 

 to have presided at the election. It might have been expected 

 that the salaries of three of these appointments should have 

 been given to some young and active philosophers whose in- 

 come, limited either by circumstances or by a too generous de- 

 votion to science, required such an addition. But with a fa- 

 tality which marks a falling institution, the three secretary- 

 ships were conferred upon men who, though in every way 

 estimable and respectable, had never been particularly active 

 in original research ; and all of whom enjoyed good profes- 

 sional incomes. One of these secretaries, indeed, was so loaded 

 with pluralities that it required seven lines of Mr Babbage's 

 smallest type to record their names; and another was actually 

 an officer of artillery on leave of absence from his regiment, and 

 who also held the paid situation of scientific adviser to the ad- 

 miralty. Of such a state of things it was the natural conse- 

 quence that the rewards of the society were adjudged upon 

 new and erroneous principles, that its Transactions no longer 

 shone with original discovery, that its funds were devoted to 

 promote no scientific object, and that the managers of the in- 

 stitution, deserted by some of its brighest ornaments, were 

 nearly incapable of forming an opinion of some of the papers 

 submitted to their review. Of subsequent events we forbear 

 to speak ; they have a tongue of their own which will soon 

 bring them into public notice. 



If any person who peruses this statement shall refuse to ad- 

 mit that the Royal Society has declined, and science along with 

 It; we would invite him, forgetting for a moment space and 

 time, to sit down, ;is we have clone, at the same table with Ca- 

 vendish, Sir W. Herschel, .Fames Watt, Maskclyne, I'layfair, 

 Hiitton, Davy, Wollastoii, Young, and ( -henevix, these mighty 

 dead, and then to name the parly of the mighty living to 

 which he will invite us in return. 



